Birmingham’s Blakfish have been doing the rounds on Britain’s burgeoning post-hardcore scene for a number of years. They played with the much-loved Meet Me In St. Louis during their final days and have already developed quite a following in the underground – a following who will be greatly pleased with Champions, their debut album.

Champions kicks off with the frenetic Economics, a raucous number about bills and overdrafts in which many students and young twenty-somethings will find catharsis through the agonised scream of, “this is one outrageous charge / I haven’t even used my card / BANKERS! YOU HEARTLESS, BASTARDS!”, while taking a pop at those who buy what they can’t afford.

Filled with hammer-ons, pull offs and duel guitar lines the next track, Ringo Starr – 2nd Best Drummer In The Beatles, focuses on the band’s disillusionment with their own generation, “I don’t know what came first / the shit music or the shit drugs / but I do know that all the kids who used to go to shows now go to clubs / I don’t like dance music and I don’t think that I ever will”.

It may seem slightly juvenile or un-weighty in its subject matter (as the band possibly acknowledge in Ringo Starr with the refrain “it could be worse, we could be dead”) but if artists write about what they know and do it well, it’ll sound heartfelt. Champions certainly manages that. The vocal delivery is caustic in its rage, the riffs especially crushing, conveying their anger in classic fashion when necessary.

Blakfish demonstrate an admirable ability to weave in and out of heavy riffs and delicate guitar noodling, most evident in Your Hair’s Straight But Your Boyfriend Ain’t, which starts with one of the most crushing guitar lines heard this side of Sikth’s last album and some of the most dreamlike guitar work since Minus The Bear’s most recent offering.

After an explosive beginning to the record, things are calmed down somewhat, relatively speaking, and the songs become slightly more driven by melody. Moving toward the post-punk side of things a la Dartz (If The Good Lord Had Intended Us To Walk He Wouldn’t Have Invented Roller Skates and We Beg, We Borrow, We Steal) but Blakfish retain their own aggressive flavour throughout the album.

There are hints of great modern punk-derived bands strung through Champions. Echoes of the aforementioned Minus The Bear and Dartz can be found in the gentler reaches while Leicester’s sorely missed Public Relations Exercise, Every Time I Die and The Number 12 Looks Like You seep into the constantly changing and unusual time signatures to be found in tracks like I Saw A Car On Fire There Once and The Closer To The Bone, The Sweeter The Meat. The songs rarely follow any kind of verse/chorus structure; it’s hardcore for the reincarnated prog fan, if that’s not too much of a contradiction.

The range of subjects covered in the lyrics is enough that Champions maintains freshness and interest with each listen. Everything from banking charges, vegetarianism, the trials and tribulations of parking, the troubles of relationships, aspirations and ambitions to wasting days watching TV are mentioned, telling tales of being a young and broke adult in modern Britain. Its not necessarily lofty and profound but it speaks to all, whether they fancy themselves as a hoity-toity highbrower or a Hollyoaks soup-brainer, and is that not the ultimate skill of song-writing: creating something that vast swathes of the record buying public can relate to while making it still sound personal to each listener and the band?

Champions indeed.